Greek’s Christmas Heir

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

L EFT TO HER own devices, Constance Jones would never have paraded her hugely pregnant body around at all, much less make a spectacle of herself like this—sticking out in the middle of the church’s nativity play like a sore thumb. An enormously pregnant sore thumb.

People were already talking about her enough as it was.

This, obviously, was not her idea.

Until Christmas Break started a few days ago, she’d run the nursery school here at the church. She’d been doing it for years and she was everyone’s favorite teacher—the children said so every year, without prompting. This year, as her belly grew bigger and the truth about her pregnancy could no longer be hidden, her kids had decided all on their own that she would make the perfect Mary for the traditional nativity play. They’d lobbied their parents. They’d put it to an adorable vote, in which Constance had squeaked out a narrow victory over Patty Cakes, the nursery school’s beloved stuffed elephant. How could she say no?

She hadn’t.

Maybe she should have.

But either way, she—an actual virgin worryingly close to her due date, a sentence she liked to repeat to herself because it was so absurd, yet true—was playing the Virgin Mary in full sight of all the people who had been gossiping about her since her grandmother had died and left her that money in her will. The same folks who had amped up that gossip once Constance had made it clear what she planned to do with her inheritance.

She fixed a beatific smile to her face now, trying to exude holiness despite how much more closely the temperature in the church tonight suggested the opposite of holiness. All the children, dressed as shepherds, various innkeeping assistants, and a questionable heavenly host of angels, were sweating. Visibly.

She, a lady playing the Holy Mother herself, could only hope she glowed.

But that was difficult to do while locking eyes with the curmudgeonly Brandt Goss in the first row where the Gosses always sat, the better to quietly proclaim their local and regional importance. Brandt openly considered himself the unofficial mayor of their little town of Halburg. Constance had always thought that must be a bone of contention between him and his wife, the long-suffering and stoic Marlene, who was also the actual mayor.

Brandt’s official title was proprietor of the little shop in town that functioned as a bit of a grocery—though it stocked a little bit of everything like any good country store. It was a place for essentials, to tide folks over between runs out to the much bigger towns some ways away that had proper stores. It was also a kind of gathering place, especially when there was coffee. It was there that Brandt had gone out of his way to make it clear that he did not approve of Constance’s plans or choices.

She suspected he’d figured he could shame her, but he had only made her miss her grandmother with an even more powerful ache than usual. Dorothy Jones—never Dot or Dottie, not if you valued your life—had not given one single hoot about anyone’s opinion save her own for as long as she’d lived. Constance had spent her own life trying to model this approach.

Especially the last nine months.

And now it was Christmas Eve. There was an intense heaviness inside of her that was expanding, bearing down, and felt like more than the simple carrying of the baby that she’d gotten used to by now. Constance felt as certain as a first-time mother could that her child was planning to make an imminent appearance.

In other words, it was too late to worry about public opinion.

But she was, it seemed. Possibly because she was finding it difficult not to over-relate to the role she was playing tonight.

Constance kept reminding herself that she , thank goodness, did not have to bed down in a stable. Fred Stewart’s prize goat gave her a reproachful sort of side-eye at that, as if suggesting she was fancy for wanting a bed, not a manger. But she didn’t care. She was lucky enough to live in the little house she’d grown up in that her father had paid off long ago, and that gift went a lot further than any frankincense or myrrh. She’d lived in tiny, sleepy Halburg her whole life. Most of her family was buried in the graveyard outside this church—though not Grandma Dorothy, who had proclaimed that as she had always preferred her own company in life, she assumed she’d like it in death, too, and had been interred in the old family plot. Everyone in this church tonight knew her history—and Dorothy’s preferences and proclamations—almost as well as Constance did. This congregation had watched her grow up, had gone to school with her, had entrusted their kids to her care.

That was a gift, too, though it didn’t quite feel like one just at present.

The nativity play kept going. Little Tommy Vanderburg was finding a head of steam as he took a little poetic license with the innkeeper, who was his older brother Amos and therefore happy enough to give it right back.

Constance stopped looking at Brandt Goss, because it didn’t matter what he thought.

She knew her grandmother better than he did because she’d known what her grandmother thought about him, and it was hardly as complimentary as he seemed to believe. Dorothy Jones had not been one to mince words. Dorothy had known Brandt his whole life and had thought he was a fool, and she had possessed precious little patience where fools were concerned.

It wasn’t Constance’s fault that Brandt had interpreted that as evidence of a sweeter disposition than Dorothy had ever claimed for herself.

What was his fault, she thought, shifting uncomfortably on her feet and wishing she could sit down to take a bit of the pregnancy load off, was the way he’d taken it upon himself to share his thoughts on Constance’s pursuit of motherhood with half the county.

It’s shameful, is what it is, he’d told everyone who would listen. And had eventually told Constance to her face. There are ways to go about having a family, Constance. And it’s not going to a clinic in Ohio.

Constance had wanted to say, What would you suggest I do? Drive down to Des Moines? Get drunk, hit the bars, hope for the best?

But she hadn’t. And not only because people whispered that a night like that was how Brandt had come by the first of his grandchildren.

One of Constance’s great regrets in life was that she had not inherited her grandmother’s delightfully sharp tongue. She had only smiled at Brandt. Not everyone is as lucky as you and Marlene, she had replied calmly. With all six of your kids.

Brandt had not been appeased. Possibly because all six had left town, and the state of Iowa, as quickly as possible after graduating high school.

She had wanted to mention the possibility that his children’s geographic choices were commentary on his own parenting, but had graciously refrained.

That had been her guide to this entire pregnancy, and the many appointments and preparations before it. Constance had been given almost a whole year now to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t really know the people in her town at all. She would’ve sworn she had, having lived here her whole life.

But she had never seen what they were like to someone they thought had made a mistake. She had never made any mistakes before. Her parents had died in a snowstorm when she was a teenager and she had lived quietly with her grandmother ever since. The town had been treating her like a geriatric old lady for years now.

They did not like the reminder that she wasn’t one. She supposed the way they saw her was part of the reason—though she hadn’t fully understood it until she’d already started down the path of her pregnancy—why she’d decided that she could not possibly turn thirty without changing her life.

It wasn’t that Constance didn’t like her life. On the contrary, she had always been quite pleased with it. She didn’t make much at the nursery school, but then, she didn’t need much. Her grandmother had imparted a lot of wisdom over the years. Much of it having to do with how to economize, how to make do, how to get by with a few clever purchases and a little common sense.

She was certain she could live quite contentedly just as she always had.

But after Grandma Dorothy passed, Constance was all alone.

Oh, she had a house full of ghosts. Beautiful ghosts, who she loved deeply. But it didn’t matter how many times she talked to the photographs on the walls, or made merry with her own memories. The facts were still the facts. She was the only one of her family left.

Having lived in Halburg since before she was born, she knew every single eligible male in the county. It was all well and good to think that she ought to pick one of them and settle down. The trouble was that she’d never felt the slightest urge to get to know any of them better than she already did.

It wasn’t that she was picky. Or Constance really didn’t think she was. She daydreamed about finding the right person and living happily ever after like anyone else. But she did think that on a basic, fundamental level, a person should only marry someone who they felt something for. Anything . Polite interest wasn’t enough for a lifetime .

She felt sure of that, somehow.

Constance knew that Brandt and his cronies found that laughable. They’d all decided that she was putting on airs, slapping the local men in the face by rejecting them all so thoroughly and going the clinic route instead of finding herself a nice husband to do the honors.

She’s always been a nice girl, she’d heard Brandt say one day.

She had been in the back of the church while he was holding court in the lobby. He’d had no idea she was there, she was sure. Or she was nearly sure.

But it’s clear to see that when Dorothy left her that money, it went straight to her head.

It was bad enough that he’d said it. It was worse that everyone around him had agreed.

It wasn’t that Constance had expected that they’d throw her a parade. But also it wasn’t the nineteen fifties. She hadn’t been on a date in her entire life, and not because she was slapping eligible men in the face or because she had such airs about her.

No one had ever asked.

Maybe she would have found one of them more interesting if they had.

But there was no changing what was, only what could be, and Constance wanted a family. Not her sweet ghosts, but a living, flesh and blood family to carry on with.

And so, thanks to Grandma Dorothy, she’d set out to make herself one.

When it had gone much easier than she’d expected it would, she’d taken that to mean that she had Dorothy’s approval.

One of her best friends from school was a midwife. Constance knew that if she looked, she would find Alyssa’s eyes in the crowd, ready to wade in and get Mother Mary out of the crowd if her time came in the middle of the service. For all the people who gossiped about her and said she was uppity and all the rest, there were also her actual friends. Who supported her. Cared for her. And were nothing but supportive when she told them that she was choosing to have her own baby, with no input from any man.

I wish I’d done the same, declared her friend Kelly, who always talked about her husband Mike as if he was another one of her toddlers. It’s the smarter way to go, in my opinion . And easier in the long run.

Constance took a breath. She tried to focus on the children, because the nativity play was where the children of Halburg got to shine. Every child who wanted one had a part, and if it wasn’t the strictest interpretation of the Bible story, well. It made everyone happy.

That was the point of Christmas, to her mind. And she hoped that one day, her own child would take part in it, too.

“Just not tonight,” she murmured beneath her breath, knowing she would be drowned out by little Ally Martingale’s piercing rendition of “Silent Night,” in her role as the singing sheep.

She and little Tommy made their way behind the trough serving as the manger, where, happily, they could sit on one of the bales of hay that had been set there. Tommy bounced back up again, while Constance had to fight back a sigh of relief.

And once her body felt slightly less... heavy , she let the singing make her heart happy the way it usually did, and congratulated herself on being this close to the finish line.

She hadn’t wavered in her goals along the way, no matter how much commentary her pregnancy had caused. She was going to have this baby. She was going to make a family. People like Brandt were so convinced that she would soon be taught the folly of her ways that she didn’t bother to tell them that if she wanted, she might go ahead and have another baby one day—because she’d always wanted a big family. Growing up as an only child who became an orphan in her teens did that to a person.

There had been physical challenges, to be sure. She had watched her body change in expected ways and also wholly unexpected ways, and had tried to tell herself that it was a marvel no matter what. Sometimes that even worked. She had not found herself turning into some kind of beacon of maternal, pregnant energy, that was for sure. She’d met women who claimed they’d never been happier or felt better than when they were pregnant, but she couldn’t say the same.

Still, Constance knew that she was doing the right thing. She already loved her baby more than it should be possible to love anything, much less a being she’d not yet met. She thought she was reasonably apprehensive about labor, but mostly, she was just excited to meet her daughter.

Her sweet little daughter, who she would teach all the things that her mother and her grandmother had taught her. Her daughter, who would make her a mother and who would make the two of them a family.

Thinking about her child helped with the beatific smile, and she looked at the rest of the congregation, which was bursting at the seams tonight. It was standing room only. The children’s nativity play always drew a crowd, and she could see almost all of her friends and neighbors there before her. That felt like its own gift. A gift for her baby’s birthday, which she was beginning to think was going to happen sooner rather than later.

“Welcome to the world, little girl,” she murmured beneath her breath. “I can’t wait to watch your beautiful life.”

And it was then, surprisingly, that she had a pang she hadn’t really had before. The sudden thought of what it would be like if she could share this moment with someone. If she had that husband she’d come to accept she never would. How marvelous it would be to meet his gaze at a time like this, across the shouting children, the proud parents gazing on, the candles and the crowd. To share this notion that there was a pageant being thrown tonight and their soon-to-be-born child had the starring role already.

It’s a good omen, she would say.

Our girl will have nothing but good omens, he would reply.

It seemed almost real. She was something like wistful...

Then it was as if she lost access to the ability to think altogether.

Because there was a man standing there at the back of the church. And it was as if everything in her body hummed out a response to the sight of him, a song that sounded a lot like, There he is!

But that didn’t make any sense.

It seemed to her that he was staring right at her, though she didn’t see how that could be true. Her brain spun around, feeling sluggish and a lot like the time her grandmother had overserved them both her favorite Kahlúa coffee. The man had to be someone’s out-of-town relative, she told herself sternly. Here in town for the holiday.

Though for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine who he could possibly be related to.

Old Sally Howard was always talking about her fancy son with his real estate license over in Galena, but Constance somehow doubted that a small-town Illinois real estate broker would command a whole church with a glance like this man. Similarly, she doubted very much that Dirk Brown’s long-lost son, the infamous Jared Brown, rumored to have lit out for the big-city splendor somewhere coastal, would come back in shockingly fancy-looking clothes like this.

Constance couldn’t have said what it was about what the man was wearing that indicated he was fancy, she only knew that he was. It was that sumptuously dark coat, and more, the way he wore it. Where anyone else would have looked bulky, he looked...sleek.

And that should have been difficult on a man so tall, with shoulders that broad.

His hair was as dark black as his coat. Even from the front of the church, she could see that his eyes were intense, a kind of smoky gray that made that song inside her lift into a sort of crescendo. And there was something about his face. She tried to figure it out. It was something about the angles, the planes, the hint of an uncontainable shadow on his jaw. He had cheekbones that should have made him look haughty, but there was that boxer’s chin. It might have been belligerent on another face. But instead, this man looked...expensively, hypnotically dangerous .

Not something a girl saw every day in rural Iowa.

It took Constance a moment to realize that the new swirl of sensation moving around inside of her had nothing to do with the baby she carried. But with him. With that mouth of his, and the way she could tell that it was sensual —a word she liked to read about but had never applied to her real life—despite the way he pressed his lips together as he stared back at her.

She jerked her gaze to the woman who stood next to him, who looked taut and waiting , like some kind of swanky serpent. She was tall and thin, though not as tall as the man beside her, and thin in that very specific way that fashionable people were. Constance would have thought this clearly powerful woman was a perfect match for a man like that, but their family resemblance was obvious. That same jet-black hair, though hers was pulled up into something that looked both complicated and effortless on the top of her head. The same harsh features as him, making her not quite pretty, but arresting.

Constance might have been able to convince herself that this was someone’s prodigal son or daughter, but she would certainly know if someone had two such members of the family. Because Halburg was the sort of place you had to mean to visit. People didn’t happen along here. It wasn’t on the way to anything. That was its charm, in Constance’s opinion. It was an intentional kind of place. It was easier to leave than to find, so a person had to really, truly want to come here if they were going to stay here.

She had roots sunk deep in the soil of Halburg, like it or not.

And she found herself continuing to sneak looks at the two of them as they stood there in the back of the church, wondering not just what had brought them here, but why tonight? Why Christmas Eve? Particularly when it was a cold and blustery one, with snow in the forecast.

But the wise men were wrapping up their endless offerings, which in this year’s version stretched to a few musical numbers and a baton routine, and a bunch of adorable toddlers who tipped this way and that like silly little drunks. And soon enough, she was able to reach down into the manger and pull out the doll that lay there, hidden from view, so that finally, the words could be spoken.

“The child is born . ”

The congregation burst into song. “Joy to the World” was belted out from every mouth.

And Constance was much more interested in having her own baby, all of a sudden. As soon as possible, for that matter. Because she was...uncomfortable. Just deeply uncomfortable, everywhere. As the song carried on around her, she was already planning what to do with her night. Go home, do some squats, bounce up and down on the inflatable ball she had for this purpose, and see if she could hasten the birth along.

But as everyone started milling around, she didn’t rush to get to her feet. She told herself it was because she was pregnant and needed to work up to it, but the truth was, she was being nosy. It was one reason she couldn’t really, truly take against any of her friends or neighbors when they gossiped about her. She knew that kind of talk was considered neighborly in a place like this. It was how people passed news along—the kind of news that mattered, because it affected everyone around them.

Her grandmother had always said that it was important to know what was happening across the planet, but not if it came at the expense of what was happening next door.

This was how Constance justified the fact that she was watching that man and the woman she was sure was the sister like a hawk, trying to see who they belonged to.

They were already making a stir, as all the rest of the congregants realized that there were strangers in the mix. She was not the only one watching the steady progress they made as they moved against the tide, down the central aisle of the church as if they were approaching the nativity scene itself.

But there was no reason for them to do that, Constance thought. By this point, she was only one sitting there. All the kids had raced off to make sure that their extended families had been paying close attention to their theatrical achievements.

So she held her breath when the pair of them came all the way up to the manger itself and stopped before her. She had the urge to stand. Or something even sillier, like curtsy—though she’d only seen curtsies on television, having never lived the sort of life that required a working knowledge of the form—and thinking something so foolish made her feel flushed and silly.

The woman looked her over with a critical eye, as if cataloging her flaws. Constance was sure there were many, not that a woman this close to giving birth could really be expected to care about such things. She would have said she hadn’t, before being caught in that basilisk’s glare.

But her attention was really caught by the man.

She could... feel him.

It was as if the simple fact of his presence before her was causing a seismic effect.

He seemed to...ripple. Everywhere. All through her body, for one thing, but she was sure that in her peripheral vision, she could see matching ripples of reaction rolling out everywhere.

Shimmering like a whole Christmas season all his own.

He studied her, too, and while his gaze was no less critical than his sister’s, there was something else in it, too. Something almost...wondering. Or maybe it was curious .

These were not the kind of reactions Constance Jones, nursery school teacher and honorary geriatric, normally inspired in men.

In fact, most men looked at her and clearly saw their grandmothers, frumpy and old-fashioned.

Not this one.

She felt her lips part of their own accord. Then she had no idea if she wanted to say something, or if she was gasping, or if she was simply undone by the undeniable force of him.

That was what it was.

There was a force all around him, and she could feel it like a touch.

It was extraordinary.

He was extraordinary.

He was even better looking up close, and that didn’t help. There was something about a gorgeous man. Not that she’d considered this in any serious way before, but they were just... too much , weren’t they? It was all too much, all that rampant masculinity where most men were just there. It was impossible to have any meaningful thoughts about it, or him, because the force of it all was everywhere.

And he was absurd, and who had eyes like that, like smoke ringed with those impossibly sooty lashes , and—

“You are Constance Jones, are you not?” he asked, though it sounded more like a command than a question.

And that was both a relief and a new bit of trouble. A relief, because it allowed her to stop that cascade of silly thoughts that she was slightly afraid had taken over her whole face, like a broadcast. But the trouble was, his voice was an epic journey all its own.

It was so gravelly . He had an accent .

And the way he said her name made that shimmering thing stronger. Deeper.

“I am,” she said, though she would have said she was her own late grandmother if that was what he’d asked. This was not the sort of man a person denied. She cleared her throat, though it didn’t need clearing. “I am Constance Jones.”

She wasn’t prepared for the way he smiled, though that wasn’t the right word. It was not a kind smile. Nor was it a happy one. But it was a curve of his mouth, nonetheless, sensual and stern. It was a flash of those intoxicating eyes, smoke and a kind of fascination that made her bones feel odd inside her body.

“Then I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said then, in a way that made it perfectly clear to Constance that delight had nothing to do with this. On his side, anyway. “I am Anax Ignatios. The father of your child.”